Iran now must drink ‘a chalice of poison’

Peace need not be “fair.”

By Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum

The Iran War Endgame Questions

On July 20, 1988, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini got on the radio to announce the end of the Iran-Iraq War. “It’s like drinking from a chalice of poison,” he said, but his regime’s survival depended on taking a sip.

Many American critics of Israel’s strike on Iran’s nuclear program and terror infrastructure complain that Jerusalem’s actions made diplomacy to resolve the nuclear impasse almost impossible.

This confuses the forest with the trees: The purpose of the diplomacy, at least from Washington’s perspective, was to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran and Diplomacy

What chief envoy Steven Witkoff and many in the State Department never understood is that Iranians look at diplomacy differently.

For Tehran, diplomacy is an asymmetric war strategy meant to distract opponents while they run down the clock, not a mechanism to resolve disputes in good faith.

During a June 14, 2008, debate at the University of Gilan, for example, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a close aide to former president Mohammad Khatami, argued that Khatami’s successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had bungled strategy with his polemics and bluster.

Rather than alarm the West, Ramezanzadeh argued, Iran should conciliate it. “We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity,” Ramezanzadeh said.

“Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.”

What Trump Wants from Iran

President Donald Trump now demands a complete cessation and forfeiture of Iran’s nuclear program. This is a correct demand. Those who argue that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can never surrender Iran’s nuclear program forget history.

Twice Khomeini reversed course, first with regard to what it would take to release American hostages seized in 1979. The Islamic Republic’s isolation had become too costly, especially after Iraq’s 1980 invasion.

Second, it agreed to a ceasefire short of toppling Saddam. That was the context of Khomeini’s poison quip.

What Happens Next?

The result of diplomacy—or military action—matters more than the process of diplomacy. The only issue for Khamenei should be the regime and his survival.

Khamenei may worry that an unconditional surrender of his nuclear program—with Israeli or American inspectors entering Fordow to truck out all equipment, material, and documents—would be the death knell for his regime.

It may be, but that is neither the problem of the White House nor the State Department.

Peace need not be “fair.” Khamenei, frankly, has no one to blame but himself for defying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for more than a quarter century, causing Iran’s referral by the International Atomic Energy Agency to the United Nations Security Council in the first place.

Nor can Khamenei complain after decades of attacking Israel by proxy and then doing so directly in April 2024.

It is time for Trump to give Khamenei a chalice of poison.